Physics undergrads once again participated in force at the Denman Undergraduate Research Forum.  Thirteen students participated and Lucas Beaufore, advised by Prof. Klaus Honscheid, won a 1st place award in the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Category.  Congratulations to Lucas and all of the other participants.

Below is a description of Lucas' research.

Scientific Verification Study of the Dark Energy Camera

In the past two decades, it has been found that our universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. The cause of this expansion is still unclear. One possible explanation is the existence of a new energy component with negative pressure, called “dark energy”, that is driving the expansion. The other explanation is that general relativity breaks down on cosmological scales. In order to study the effect of dark energy, the Dark Energy Survey (DES) collaboration has constructed the Dark Energy Camera (DECam), a specialized camera sensitive to light in the visible and infrared spectrum. 

The goal of this project is to identify issues with the exposures taken by the DECam. This project investigates relations between a number of factors, such as telescope orientation and configuration, environmental conditions, and image quality. Various correlations have been found or verified as a result of this analysis. For example, these analyses provided evidence that the Active Optics System was working as expected, as well as evidence that the pointing model of the telescope may be causing pointing offsets. These results contributed to those of the collaboration as a whole which show evidence of possible issues that, if corrected, may increase the quality of exposures taken by the DECam and prevent delays in its operation. Understanding this complex instrument and improving the quality of delivered images is an ongoing effort. The DECam began its survey in September in 2013 and will continue for 5 years.